Introduction

Housing is always a contentious issue in the Bay Area, but especially in the terms of the contemporary debates in East Palo Alto around the “Opportunity to Purchase Act” (OPA), it is even more worth exploring.

The OPA would offer more opportunities for the city of EPA, tenants, and certain non-profits to purchase residential property. This act has divided the city mainly on the lines of renters and homeowners in EPA and beyond.Renters, who view the OPA as providing them with more accessible ways to purchase housing, are relatively more in favor of the OPA. Homeowners, on the other hand, are largely against the act, which they say could disadvantage them in selling their homes.

There are also diverse sets of other motives said and unsaid, which makes the OPA and housing at large in EPA an even more complex and interesting topic to study. Using census data, researchers and analysts can determine what the demographics of EPA are (homeowner v. renters), what the shifts in tenure have been, and other more granular details that can help better inform the city counselors’ votes.

Here is a Map of East Palo Alto Census Block Groups to provide some context about where EPA is located and divided up on the census level.

Median Home Values

Before we look at housing burden, it is also important to note the medium home value in East Palo Alto as determined by the ACS 5yr survey. In the table below you can see the medium home-value in East Palo Alto is $821,200 which is much lower than the San Mateo County median home value at $1,089,400. Especially since EPA is surrounded by more economically wealthy areas with much higher housing prices, gentrification is also a concern for many EPA renters and residents. Additionally many non-resident stakeholders have been weighing in on city deliberations for OPA.Throughout these conversations, it is even more complicated to reflect on whose voice has or should have more weight in decision-making?

East Palo Alto Median Home Value ($)

## # A tibble: 1 × 4
##   id      variable    estimate label                           
##   <chr>   <chr>          <dbl> <chr>                           
## 1 0620956 B25077_001E   821200 Estimate!!Median value (dollars)

Median Home Value ($) in San Mateo County

## # A tibble: 1 × 4
##   id    variable    estimate label                           
##   <chr> <chr>          <dbl> <chr>                           
## 1 06081 B25077_001E  1089400 Estimate!!Median value (dollars)

Housing Burden

To assess housing burden, the ACS Survey B25074 - HOUSEHOLD INCOME BY GROSS RENT AS A PERCENTAGE OF HOUSEHOLD INCOME IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS and B25095 - HOUSEHOLD INCOME BY SELECTED MONTHLY OWNER COSTS AS A PERCENTAGE OF HOUSEHOLD INCOME IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS, demonstrate the pre-determined threshold for housing burden.

30% or more of household income as a rent or owner cost (in the official categorization) is considered “burdened.” Of course, there are many other determiners of housing burden that may not be included in this assessment, but it is an interesting way to examine how many households are burdened by housing or renting costs in EPA.

This OPA could alleviate the burden for some, while potentially worsening it for others. Only time will tell what will actually happen in terms of the OPA effectiveness, but some analyses can be conducted to help assess which community members can benefit and predict some of the downstream impacts.

Renter Housing Burden

## # A tibble: 1 × 4
##   burdened_sum total_pop percent_burdened tenure                 
##          <dbl>     <dbl>            <dbl> <chr>                  
## 1         2583      4648             55.6 Renter-Occupied Housing

The table above shows that 55% percent of renters in EPA are housing burdened (spend 30% or more of their income on housing). That is a very high percentage and demonstrates that the OPA, has the potential to many renters, if they have the means or want to purchase a home. Whether or not OPA is passed, EPA should work on other policies to address the vast amounts of renter housing burden.

Home Owner Housing Burden

## # A tibble: 1 × 4
##   burdened_sum total_pop percent_burdened tenure                
##          <dbl>     <dbl>            <dbl> <chr>                 
## 1         1281      3076             41.6 Owner-Occupied Housing

The table above shows that 41.64 % of Home-Owners in EPA are housing burdened (spend 30% or more of their income on housing). This is also a pretty high number, and speaks to a larger issue of housing burden, affordability, and insecurity that should be addressed in EPA. The OPA, when/if passed, should also take into consideration the benefits of both renters and homeowners and ensure that neither are left out of the equation completely.

Housing Burden by Income

This plot shows the percent of housing burdened populations in each household in each census income level by tenure (homeowner v. renter). Both populations are similarly burdened throughout income tiers. Homeowners are more housing burdened than renters at lower income levels, which makes sense because they have to spend more of their income on more expensive housing. Renters have a much higher percentage of burden after $20,000 income or more, decreasing after $70,000 which makes sense because this is above EPA’s median household income ($83,511).

East Palo Alto Zoning and OPA Exemption

As a result of an outcry from many single-family households who believe that the OPA would disadvantage them in selling their homes, the city has had to reconsider to whom OPA will apply. A recent decision by the city, now makes single-family homeowners exempt from the OPA, meaning that they would not have to wait for the allotted time for non-profits, tenants, or the city to buy first.

In filtering to Residential-Low Density (R-LD) in the San Mateo County Property zoning data, we can narrow down to about all the single-family households in East Palo Alto. These single family households would now be exempt from the EPA OPA based on the new revisions to the act.

This next section will examine the single-family households in EPA impacted by this new decision and make some further analyses about tenure in EPA.

R-LD Map by Tenure

This map shows the breakdown of single family residents by tenure with renters (yellow) and homeowners (blue) in EPA.

It’s interesting to notice the pretty even mix of stakeholders for each block and how that could have further implications for OPA exemption impacting support.

Exemption from OPA Map

This map shows just the single family homeowners in EPA, these are the families that would be exempt given the new OPA amendment.

This is a pretty sizeable chunk of East Palo Alto, so I imagine that many of these homeowners will now support the OPA given this amendment. Of course, further surveying is needed to understand all of the diverse factors influencing stakeholder support and opposition.

This plot shows the population of renters and homeowners in EPA from 2015-2019. You can see that there are already much fewer homeowner households as compared to renters, but as time moves towards 2019 renters increase as homeowners decrease. If this trend continues, perhaps OPA’s benefits towards renters might be more impactful to a greater population in the future as well. It would also be interesting to examine how many homeowners became renters and if a significant number of renters became homeowners.

Conclusion

Many stakeholders and especially critics of the OPA have highlighted that the city does not even know the long term economic impacts of this issue and have done no effort to analyze how much enforcing the act with cost the city. It will be important for the city not just to analyze the economic cost but also the impacts on residents, community members, and business affiliates. Especially since so many stakeholders are non-residents, it will also be important to keep track of how the city wants to values the voices of renters, homeowners, local workers, business owners non-resident stakeholders, etc. in their deliberations.

East Palo Alto has long been a site of inequities and racial disparities compared to surrounding areas. But how does that compare internally and will this shift over time with more renters as the current trend but the OPA offers the potential for more new homeowners to enter this mix.

It will also be important for the city to analyze equity impacts of the OPA on the lines of race and socio-economic status to see how the OPA can help address inequities and not intensify disparities.

I would also propose that the city conduct a survey for current renters to assess their desire and ability to purchase a home given the opportunity and potential aid of the OPA. This survey would help illustrate the extent to which the OPA would be serving the intended main beneficiaries of the act or if it will mainly result in bureaucratic complications for home and landowners.

Again, further surveying and meeting with stakeholders is needed to understand all of the diverse factors influencing support and opposition to OPA, but analyzing some of these factors can help in better unpacking the complexities and downstream impacts OPA may have on the EPA community and beyond.